As I come to the last two weeks of my sabbatical, I feel a bit rushed to get lots of renewing/refreshing activities in…and of course that’s totally the opposite of how I’m supposed to be using this time. I feel a fair amount of good Calvinist guilt about not having updated this blog in so long…which again is not the point.
So, I am resolved that whatever I get done I get done. And the blog is only here for me to reflect and ponder what God may be saying to me during this time, and allow whoever may be reading to eavesdrop on those ponderings.
Last week I presented my paper on Calvin’s view of deception again at the H. Henry Meeter Center for Calvin Studies, where I have a little office and where I’ve been doing occasional research, in between helping with childcare and other domestic duties. I now have to get it into proper shape for publication, and I plan to submit to a British journal called Reformation & Renaissance Review. [Update: It will be coming out in next issue of that journal.] I’m also working on an article on Henry Ainsworth, who was a teacher and Bible scholar in the early 1600′s who was a leader in the study of Jewish interpreters of the Bible. He was also part of a somewhat extreme, radical separatist group that rejected the Church of England and eventually went into exile in Holland. These people later emigrated to the British Colonies; Americans know them as the Pilgrim Fathers, or just the Pilgrims.
I’m also doing a couple of “churchy” things, but with less pressure and more time to think and reflect. I’m writing an article for The Banner, for the “Reformed Matters” column, on God’s sovereignty. I was motivated by what I considered the less-than-adequate and rather misleading piece on “The New Calvinism” in the last issue, which portrayed the Reformed teachings on predestination and election in an unfair and distorted light. (I also wrote a letter to the editor; we’ll see if it gets in or not [Update: not surprisingly, it did not. There's a definite bias against that kind of robust Calvinism among the old boys network in the CRC]).
The other churchy thing I’m doing is writing up a description of our CrossTraining service for the journal Reformed Worship. Whenever I describe our teaching service I get a lot of interested queries, and requests to write a wee article on the subject, and so I’m trying to use the opportunity to do that.
On the back burner at the moment is my work on the Reformation Commentary on Scripture. But you can’t do it all. Or at least I can’t!
